In “The Subject Was Roses,” Nettie Cleary tells her 21-year-old son that she was hit in the eye by an apple core just before she was to start a new job. Because she developed a shiner, she was too embarrassed to show up. As a result, she had to get another job where she met Timmy’s father — and that’s where her real problems began.

Stephanie Zimbalist nods slowly as she’s reminded of the speech. Starting on Tuesday, she will portray Nettie in Frank D. Gilroy’s 1965 Pulitzer Prize-winner at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick.

“We all have points in our lives where two roads present themselves and we have to make a decision very fast,” she says, snapping her fingers quickly to underline the need for speed. “We don’t know how it will impact our lives, but it usually does.”

She lifts her hands and makes an expansive gesture. “It happened to me when I was applying to colleges,” she says. “I’d settled on seven and had to write an essay for each. I was either going to be an art history or English major, so that meant Yale, Columbia, Connecticut and Sarah Lawrence. Or I was going to be an actress, which meant Juilliard, Stanford or Cal-Irvine. Well, one day I got out of a cab too fast and I left in it the essays for Yale, Columbia, Connecticut and Sarah Lawrence. So I became an actress.”

Of course, some inspiration came from her father, actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and the stars with whom he worked. “As a little girl, I got to meet Audrey Hepburn, who took my face in her hands and suddenly make me want to be an actress,” she says.

Hence, Stephanie Zimbalist’s extensive experience in films (“The Awakening”), her noted TV series “Remington Steele” and stage appearances from Ogunquit, Maine, where she played the title role in “Sylvia,” to multiple roles at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Zimbalist, 54, had never seen or read “The Subject Was Roses” when old friend Michael Mastro, who is directing, sent her the script.

“We’ve all done our fair share of therapy,” she says matter-of-factly. “So now we know such terms as ‘family systems,’ ‘co-dependent’ and ‘enmeshment.’ These issues are all over the play, but it takes place in 1946, when these terms didn’t exist. People had to deal with these conditions without the labels. It’s rather nice to be brought back to an era when such issues haven’t been named. It allows us to see them more clearly for what they actually were.”

Nettie Cleary does not have a happy marriage to John, but has always stayed in it partly because of Timmy. Zimbalist has not faced these problems.

“I couldn’t have done everything I have if I’d had a child, so I have no regrets,” she says. “Besides, I have four nieces and nephews and a great-niece and a great-nephew,” she says, stressing the word “great” to capture both meanings of the word.

Then she reaches over to caress her long-haired dachshund. “And I have Scampi,” she says. She’s still traumatized from what happened to her previous dog. “Right in my front yard I saw him killed by a coyote,” she says. “I was just about to play a dog on stage — in ‘Sylvia’ — but called and said I couldn’t do it. But then I felt my dog come to me and say, ‘Yes, you can.’ And I did it.”

So Zimbalist isn’t particularly sorry that she lost those essays. Going to shoot “Remington Steele” in France, Ireland, Malta and points beyond ameliorated many disappointments.

“Pierce Brosnan,” she says, referring to her co-star, “is a very sweet man. Oh, we had our issues, but a lot of it was hormones.”

The Subject Was Roses

Where: George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick

When: Tuesday to March 6. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m., Thursdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m.